Hobbies / Books   (Gardening, walking, books, films, theatre etc.)

Perhaps the mild winter did not help.

Some plants need the winter cold.

Daffs are very hardy: mine survived the prolonged minus fifteen degrees we had some time back (2010, I think). They had already emerged, as prior to the freeze up it had ben mild.

I did though lose all my snowdrops: they did not survive recent spring droughts.

Once upon a time, I lived in Grasmere. The daffs that Wordsworth wrote about survive some really cold mountain winters.

It is important to let the greenery photosynthesise after the blooms fall. The embryo of the flower is already formed in the bulb before the plant spouts: last years growing conditions are usually the determinant of whether or not a bloom is produced. If the plant did not capture enough energy from sunlight, which is stored in the bulb, then the bulb will not set a flower embryo, and next year the result is a so called blind. ie foliage grows but no flower.